This spring, first-year Texas A&M environmental design students envisioned how future population needs of historic Siena, Italy could be met by building models of elevated urban environments atop existing buildings.

The iconoclastic designs of Modern master architect Victor Lundy will be researched by Susanneh Bieber, Texas A&M assistant professor of architecture and visualization with the help of a 2018 grant from the university’s Arts and Humanities Fellows Program.

Senior environmental design students recently designed and built small-scale prototypes for lightweight collapsible pavilions that could be deployed at full scale up to 400 square feet. The portable, transformable structures expand to form artistic, architecturally intriguing canopies.

Enabled by virtual reality technology, visitors to the recent Bluebonnet Festival in Chappell Hill, Texas explored a historic Texas building demolished more than a century ago. The building was recreated as an immersive virtual model by Siva Ramadoss, a Master of Construction Management student.

A team of Texas A&M urban planners are investigating the value of allowing “citizen scientists” to collect environmental data for agencies charged with protecting lives and property in natural disasters as part of a two-year National Science Foundation study.

Empowered by virtual reality goggles, patrons of a year-culminating exhibit of visualization student work soared above clouds and performed other superhuman feats in immersive alternative worlds created in an interactive design studio at Texas A&M.

For the fourth consecutive year, Texas A&M was recognized as one of the nation’s top animation schools, placing third among public institutions, second in the Southwest and first in Texas in lists created by Animation Career Review, a career resource website.